Avengers : Infinity War
by Mr. Bluu
Summary: In which Thanos makes an offering to his lover, the Guardians welcome a strange, one-eyed berserker among them, the apocalypse descends on Avengers busy enough fighting each other, and worlds unknown finally see the light of day. It's here.
1. The Edge

_Let's just say Mistress Death is played by Sally Hawkins. Why? Because I said so. This will really just be me telling Infinity War the way I want because I want to. I cannot wait!_

The cosmos blink, and their eyes stay lightless. The stars cease to glimmer as Thanos gazes upon them. Even his mighty throne, forged from the murdered stone of Titan and Chitauri propulsion motors, made no sound. The dotting lights on it were hushed into blackness. One massive, midnight-colored hand rests on his armored temple, and Thanos contemplates the universe he surveys. Or rather, the edge of it.

Where Thanos stares is where the universe ends, begins to fray and tear ever so slightly. Here, existence fades in and out at odd intervals. The coding that made up all reality, like an old rug, had developed holes at its edge. These revealed only darkness to the Mad Titan's alien eyes. Through these portals was oblivion blacker and more incalculable than the deepest depths of space. Thanos could feel the power wafting from them. Gravity and inertia and specks of spatial dust, unveiled to him by his superhuman senses, bent around the holes. As existence winks out, it sucks radiation and electromagnetic fields into the same crushing destruction it suffers. He leans forward. Thanos' fingers, secure in the golden mail of the Infinity Gauntlet, stroke his wrinkled chin.

It was that same quiet, inevitable sun of death that once, long ago, had brought Thanos up from nothing. Now he calls to her again, as he has so many times before. The thunderclap of his fist upon the armchair of his throne mirrors the pangs of longing in his heart. He implores her to come to him again, and allow him to gather the offering he hoped to gift her. Soon Thanos' crusade will begin. He wishes only to look upon her one last time before he departs.

His request yields fruit.

From far out, beyond the edge of the universe, where even black holes are choked into silence, she comes.

She is tall, taller than the mind can comprehend. Her skin blazes as white as the core of a star, and her hair is as wild and long as a solar system off its axis, as does her black cloak. Like a moon, circular and commanding, her face curves. She is bigger and taller and so impossibly high that it seems to Thanos that she could take the whole of reality in the palm of her hand. Around her, those holes in time and space widen, growing hungrily as if her mere presence degrades the universe around her.

In one blink of the Mad Titan's piercing eyes, she is in front of him, his size. Thanos rises from his throne, and kneels his great, godlike bulk at her feet.

"Mistress Death," he breathes, his eyes burning into the endless expanse of space he and the object of his affections are suspended upon. He feels her smile; cold, lifeless, but a comfort of Thanos' that was second to none. One of her dainty hands caresses his jaw, and the Mad Titan is clay in her grip.

"Rise, my love," Thanos hears Death say. He stands now, dwarfing her now that she's shrunk. Deep into her milky white, pupiless eyes he gazes, full of dark adoration. As tenderly as a universal primordial like Death can, she meets his gaze. As content as she once he embraces her, she weeps. Thanos notes with morbid rage the black tears flowing from her eyes. One purple blue finger trails over Death's cheek. The flesh is as frozen as the vacuum of space on Thanos' digit as he wipes away the dark fluid.

"Why do you weep, Mistress? Who has wounded you?" Thanos rumbles. Death sniffs, still imperious despite whatever is now eating at her unbeating heart. He searches her features, contemplating.

She pats the blue material of Thanos' armor, shaking her head. "My beloved," Death replies. "It is my daughter. You remember her, do you not? Born of my union with the king of the Asgardians. Recently his soul has passed into my grip, and I watched as Asgard fell and my sweet Hela and Surtur destroyed each other. You know his kiss, dearest; like the flames he devours all he touches. I cannot feel her consciousness out in the cosmos."

Thanos, hard heart awakening more and more every moment he was near Death, smiles. This was not the grin he wore when he ripped the limbs from his daughter, Nebula; nor was this the smirk that had plastered itself across his alien countenance when The Other, his deceased servant, had warned him of the dangers of challenging the heroes of Earth. No, the Mad Titan smiles with pride; pride for how totally he is about to wipe away her sorrow.

"True, you may not feel the tug of her being any longer," Thanos begins, his booming voice barely above a whisper. The wide, harsh planes of his face are very close to the smooth swirls of Death's. "But soon, you will be overflowing with the imprints of others' consciousnesses. From Earth to Xandar to Olympus to Zenn-La the universe will buckle between my hands. I give all of them, and the starways I will bathe in their blood, to you, Mistress."

Death's monochromatic eyes widen, and suddenly Thanos has her full attention. "I have . . . heard them calling- felt their emanations all over the universe. The Stones. My love . . . you do not mean that-" Thanos hefts the Infinity Gauntlet, taking the ghost of Death's hand in its unfeeling metal fortress of fingers.

"I do. My Black Order scours known space for them even now."

"You know what you must do, don't you? Where you must return to? You know what waits for you there."

Thanos' face sours slightly. His hand in the Gauntlet squeezes his lover's fingers tighter, wantingly. Eyes gazing unfocused into the unending cauldrons of blackness around him, he speaks slowly and severely.

"It is no pain I haven't suffered already," he grunts. At the thought of returning to such a graveyard as _home_ , Thanos suddenly feels very weary. "I wished to see you, once more, before I join my Outriders and find the Stones. It may be a great while before I can come here once again."

Death's demeanor changes, becomes more sultry, and lips as blue as a drowned corpse's meet Thanos's own. The Mad Titan seizes her in his powerful arms and holds her to him possessively.

"I have seen your heart, Thanos of Titan."

Death's cloak is gone now. She is nude, destructive, crushing and black and beautiful; entropy itself.

"Show me the rest of you," she whispers.

Shadows and warping sightless time close in on the two. As they make love, hidden in the void of existence that had opened around them, Thanos immerses himself in death. Not the cosmic force that pleasured him now, but the _concept_. Inescapable ruination. The absence of breath, of blinking and moving. Curiosity and hate and pondering and despair all are burned out in the blink of an instant. They snake closer now, joined at the hips. Death's face appears in Thanos' head, still, muscles relaxed, white irises hidden. The mind image is dead, and the Mad Titan knows Death sees him the same way within her own eldritch thoughts. It builds their insidious passions, both of them so obsessed with that final destiny.

As they approach the end, Thanos wraps his hand in the Infinity Gauntlet around Death's throat. She arches around him, undulating like waves of cosmic radiation under his touch. The Gauntlet glints, even in the rich darkness around them, and he sees the stars snuffed out, the galaxy on fire, and the universe returned to dim, dark, serene quiet.

That is all it takes to push him over the edge, and he shudders with Death in his hands.

When Thanos comes to, he rests on his throne, again observing the same pinpoints of nothing that had been poked in material reality he had been earlier. A chill so cold it burns still ripples from his lips.

Confident, Thanos makes a fist in his new Gauntlet, and turns back towards the stars . . . ready to destroy them all.


	2. Titan

The pools of fear in the child's eyes didn't dissuade Sui-San the Eternal in the slightest as she approached him. Tears still streaked his hideous face, and his purple hued arms were raised above his head, as if to block the blows his mother would rain upon him. Not that it would have mattered, for her son Thanos was immune to, as far as she knew, every form of harm. She had dropped him from cliffs as an infant, fed him to the vast, spiny, horrific beasts that roamed Titan's barren plains; on the night the grotesque mockery of Eternal perfection had been born, Sui-San had even tried to strangle the baby in his crib. Nothing she could procure had any effect on him. The abhorrent Deviant deformity in his genetics made him invincible, invulnerable to all her attempts to be rid of him.

Almost all.

A Queen knows her kingdom, and Sui-San was no different. She knew of the power the Eternals had harnessed, of the amber singularity that held sway over the peppering of the cosmos. The Soul Stone, buried beneath Titan's crust for so many centuries, keeping her people's skin youthful, giving them true claim to the title "Eternals". What she did not know was that the Stone had a soul of its own, a sweet voice that echoed through eternity to reach her in her dreams.

It told her that she had been in the right, so long ago, her hands ripped from around baby Thanos' throat as Mentor, her husband, threw her from the room. Her only error, the flattering gem had whispered, was her method. 'Take me,' it spoke. 'And the blight that grew in your womb will be lanced with ease. Titan will be free of him, your honor restored. Mentor will love you again.'

Such a persuading melody took root in Sui-San's neglected heart, and from then on she was the Stone's slave. When it implored the Queen of the Eternals to listen, she listened. When it baid she took the elevator deep into the bowels of the planet and retrieve it, she had. And, when the time had come to make herself a vessel for the Infinity Stone, to carve herself open and have machines place it inside her, to bleach her insides of the Deviant monstrosity that had grown in her, Sui-San had taken the plunged with no hesitation.

She felt it within her now, burning in her abdomen, a silent flame; unfathomably intelligent, yearning for her to loom over Thanos, wield its might and wipe him from existence. Sui-San's shadow is cast over the child, pruned chin, muscled physique and all. As she raises her arms and cosmic energy surges into her hand, she and the Stone are one.

In the last instant before she obliterates her shameful spawn, the Stone relents, and the tiniest fraction of its power it had doled out to her returns to its core. The heat that had sizzled in her stomach becomes a roaring inferno. Now the Soul Stone burns throughout her body, filling her with smoke; burning her out. It has betrayed her.

Sui-San gets half a scream out before the sound of roiling flames devours her voice, as well as her body.

Seek me.

Thanos opens his eyes, fresh tears staining his scarred cheeks, as well as dark spots of blood. The view that greets him is horrific. His mother, having once again come to his chambers late at night to make her hatred of him known, had blown apart somehow. Copious amounts of blood and viscera known and unknown splatter the walls and the ceiling of Thanos' chambers. Some of Sui-San, her left arm and smaller strips of flesh from spots he did not know, had ripped itself away from the rest of her body, but the greater portion of her was still mostly together; still warm, though silent she would forever be.

Thanos knew he should feel something; after all, it was not as though he despised his mother. To tell it true, he loved her. After all, hers was the first face that had greeted him in the world. She had suckled him at her breast, no matter how much she looked on him with shame. She had let him live in a palace, no matter how much she wished to abandon him in Titan's wilderness. If it were not for his mother, Thanos would not be Prince, or may not even have lived past infancy at all.

It perplexes him that for all this, he cannot muster one tear to mourn her passing.

His vexing is short-lived as the voice returns again. Something smaller and older and brighter than the sun itself commanded him.

'Seek me amongst the dead. I desire what you alone will harvest, Thanos of Titan.'

So Thanos kneels in front of the husk of his mother, steam from her still warm insides caressing his face. He digs methodically, scooping her flesh from her body. Ligament and bone parts under his Deviant fingertips. The mushing, ugly sounds that would no doubt come from rummaging around in a corpse don't dissuage Thanos for an instant. He can feel his prize drawing nearer, hotter, hotter, hotter- There! It's easily distiguisable from the steaming carcass around it. It's warmer, smoother, like a swirling whirlpool of fire between his fingertips. As if it recognizes him, the object warms even hotter. Thanos pulls his already mighty arms slowly from the sucking maw of carrion that was once his mother. Visible even through coatings of blood on his forearms was the stone which had called to him.

Liquids of all kinds oxidized and turned to gas upon touching it. It was beautiful, deeply amber and golden. Reflective surfaces within the gem cast minute white tree branches through it, all emanating from the white hot void at its center. In Thanos' hand, it spoke.

'Behold me, Thanos of Titan. I am warm, am I not? So too am I beautiful.'

"What are you?"

'I speak for the singularities. I am a piece of the divine made solid, given a gateway into the universe's fabric, which I was made to sew. So were you, Thanos of Titan. I have peered forward in time, and all that greets me is darkness. All of it wafts from you, standing triumphant in its center, wearing shining mail upon your arm. Eternity deigns you will wield the Gauntlet. You will hold all of us within it, and deliver to me what I crave the most.'

"And what do you crave?"

'Some of them approach now. You just might find out.'

The stone quiets just as the door to the room bursts open. It dims, its brilliant amber glory hidden for the moment, as Mentor, King of the Eternals, surveys the corpse of his wife and his ill-begotten son standing over her.

"Thanos?"

The mishappen Prince does not answer. Thanos' ears, eyes, and soul are all beholden to the lava colored stone in his hand. He hears his father snap his fingers, trying to get his attention, but the sound seems like it comes from the top of a very large hill, at the bottom of which Thanos sits. He does, however, find it odd that his father, as he did, sheds no tears for the slain Queen of the Eternals. In fact, looking up at Mentor, Thanos doesn't see the slightest, smallest twitch in his father's face. Mentor wears the same sour countenance he usually did, reaching domineeringly for his son's bulging bicep. No doubt he'd be punished again.

But his father had not even reacted to Sui-San's death. His father didn't care.

Terrifying fury burns in Thanos' forehead, pure and bright, just as Mentor touches his rippling, muscled form.

The stone lights again. Thanos is meshed by a second skin of scorching, orange light. Mentor immediately steps back, but the fateful chain reaction he has begun will not stop. The glowing casing expands, blistering and searing everything in its path. Bigger, bigger, bigger it grows, devouring the room in crushing, thermobaric oblivion. Sui-San's body turns to fine ash, as does Mentor, and the rest of the palace.

Thanos knows what he has started; knows what destiny the Stone and its vision has set him on. As his knees meet the lifeless, charred stone that had once been his home, now spread for miles around him . . .

The light pops, and in an instant, Titan is turned into a hellscape. Life leaves its surface as their ashen husks blow away in the rushing, flaming winds. Cities are flattened, smashed and incinerated. All of the wonders of a thousand thousand years of Eternal civilization, gone in an the blink of an eye. The planet is turned into seared, steaming stone, its entire breadth blasted a deep, dark orange.

Only Thanos remains. He stays silent, kneeling, with his eyes closed. The tears on his face had long since been evaporated in the colossal heatwave that had made him the last Eternal. His nose brings him the smoked scent of burning; nothing in particular, for everything the world over was on fire.

What was he to do now?

No long after he sees the luminescent, pale white hand upon his shoulder, hears the sweet voice of its owner, and feels the cold emanating from her that feels as though it could freeze Titan to its core, he knows.


	3. Earth-Statesman-Sanctuary

Stephen Vincent Strange knelt on the exquisite Hindi rug, snug in the soundproof void of the New York Sanctum's meditation chamber. He breathed deep, ran his left hand over his bearded face, and closed his eyes.

Something had been tugging at this senses all day, pulling his faculties out of tandem with each other. Stephen supposed it was the mental equivalent of a long day with a pebble stuck in one's shoe; at best, bothersome. At worst, hell. His position as Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, as well as the wielder of the Eye of Agamotto, put him in tune with the ebb and flow of cosmic regularity. The Infinity Stone he wore around his neck for most of his days elevated his mind. Its power took his consciousness and dipped it into the infinite, letting him breathe it in and absorb it.

At best, bothersome. At worst, hell.

A pebble in one's shoe.

Ha.

Now, Stephen probes that quantum stream, all sorts of divine leverage passing from his lips in the form of spells. His hands, scarred and knobbly, bent and flowed in patterns one wouldn't assume they had the grace for at first look. Emerald, silent sparks flew from his left forearm as the magical controls for the Eye burst into being. Like a new sun being born, the gamma blast of the Eye's light flashes from Stephen's chest where it hung.

Now he was ready. For the sake of caution, Stephen needed to identify that mental itch, and whether or not it was a threat.

First his hand was submerged, and he pulls up mud and forbidden knowledge from the stream with it. What he sifts through, he recognizes. It feels the same as the very Stone he wore did. It was hot in his grip with the same infallible power, wizened with the same uncountable ages it had endured. Stephen removes the dregs from it, the faded whispers and insignificant seconds; the final coveted pearl is all that remains, warm and smooth against his astral projection's skin. It was purple, brighter and more beautiful than the slowest formed amethyst. As Stephen takes in its pure, burnished glimmer, a landscape flashes into existence around him. Burning, broken towers and cities ravaged by hordes of rabid, six-armed monsters coalesce. Swarms of alien, chittering hovercraft patrol the ashen sky, as do winged and armored serpents large as whales.

Stephen surveys this landscape, all the blood and the corpses and the broken craft that the slain populace had tried to defend themselves with. The gem in his hand, almost forgotten in the sea of suffering around him, begins to levitate.

A hand, as deep purple as the stone itself, clasped the Stone in its fingers. It grew, becoming an arm with massive biceps, thick golden armor, expanding until the figure towered over Stephen's astral form. He was twisted and herculean all at once, with a pruned chin, scarred face, and eyes that reminded Stephen of staring into the Dark Dimension.

The figure held the Infinity Stone in his hands, admiring it.

Then his eyes lock on Stephen.

"You may hold a Stone, sorcerer," He said. The being hefted a great gauntlet on his left arm, the Stone floating into one of its slots as if by magnetism. "But this one belongs to Thanos!"

The gauntlet wraps around Stephen's throat and he is shouted from the stream. The infinite rejects him, and he is forced, breathing heavily and sweating, back onto the Hindi rug in the New York Sanctum.

Wong, his burly and stoic ward, bursts into the room. "Strange?" he asks inquisitively. "What have you seen?"

"The end. Bring me the Book of Eternity."

"They're gaining on us!" Loki screams at Thor, King of Asgard, as the Statesman shakes from the impact of another dozen salvos from the massive warship currently giving chase. The viewport the brothers look out of fails to capture the true enormity of the endless vessel, all black and armored and long. Flames burn in sections of exposed wall and broken wires. Sakaarian steel, blue and red and green, is scattered all over the floor in large chunks.

"Of course," whispers Heimdall, steely calm despite the impending destruction approaching them. "Asgard is gone. The Titan smells blood, and Ragnarok continues."

"Thor!" Brunhilde exclaims. The darker-skinned Asgardian shoves Thor with a deadly concoction of outrage and desperation on her face. "What do we do?!" The Thunder God turns on his lieutenants, a thousand years of combat setting his eye into a determined look, and his resolve to iron.

"Heimdall, you led our people through Hela's invasion. They believe in you, trust you. Get them to the escape pods, as many as you can. Do not tarry. Take Brunhilde with you."

Heimdall looks at the Odinson, his once proud amber eyes seem so dim. He approaches Thor slowly, pressing his forehead to the younger God's softly. "I will see you again, my King. For Odin." Then the Guardian of The Bifrost took off into the bowels of the ship. Thor says nothing, only wishing his father's friend good fortune.

"Loki, make sure you have the Tesseract, and get the hell off this ship, quickly."

Brunhilde shoots the God of Mischief an accusing look before taking off after Heimdall, and in light of the hostile force bearing down on them, Loki cannot help but chuckle. "You really are scary, you know that, brother?" With a flick of the wrist, Loki pulls from the magical ether the blue prism of the Tesseract. Thor gazes on it for a second, wishing so desperately to return to that moment, to hating Loki and having his hammer back and fighting for the thing; Before everything had gotten so complicated. Before the apocalypse had found them.

"Get it out of here. Take it to Earth. Stark will know what to do." He turned to the pilot's chair, where a mass of blue stone sat, headset firm and secure on his polygonic forehead. "Korg? Do we read boarding parties?!"

"Yeh boss!" The rock-figure replied. "Lookin' like bugs or somethin'. Gold, purple, lots a' gray."

The Chitauri. Huh.

With that, Thor turned to the last of his lieutenants, a smile gracing his face.

"What do you say? Shall we greet our guests, like we did in New York? For old times' sake?"

The Hulk cracks his knuckles and grins back.

In the deepest annals of _Sanctuary II_ , Corvus Glaive, the Titan's Hound, the most loyal of all of the Black Order of Thanos, who would sooner cut his own throat than disobey his father, kneels in a chamber lit only by red lights inlaid within the walls. A throne faces away from him, completely covered by the soft darkness. The only safety from it is the hard, cleaving edge of light from the Power Stone that cuts through it like a knife through butter.

"The Chitauri have successfully boarded the Sakaarian vessel," Glaive growled. "The Space Stone flees from the battle. Ebony Maw is ready to retrieve it. The inhabitants have unleashed their strongest fighters on our invading forces, and we may lose our beachead."

"It matters not," rumbles Thanos of Titan from his high seat. "The Space Stone is what we seek and it is still well within our grasp. I know the love you have for bloodshed, Glaive. Go to them and their foolish champions. Teach them the error of their ways. Take Black Dwarf, and bring me the head of Thor Odinson."


	4. New York City

"We ever gonna find them, Tony?" Rhodey's voice seemed distant in the Mark L's helmet receiver as Tony Stark, known to the world for a decade as Iron Man, patrolled the New York skyline alongside the obsidian colored, heavier built War Machine. Tony hasn't worn an Iron Man suit in the city for a year, and before that, five years. The sensations and familiar flight vectors taken remind him of better days. Tony can almost see the portal in the sky again, feel the mortal terror strike him even in his impenetrable suit as the hordes of slavering Chitauri poured from the tear the Tesseract had wrent in the air.

However terribly that day had wounded him, plagued him for years afterward, in the back of his mind he wishes for it. At least then, he'd known who he could trust and wasn't relegated to being a U.N. lapdog. He'd had Rhodey by his side for 20 years, yet when the Chitauri attacked he'd had five others he could call friends. Now, through machinations with artificial intelligence or assumption, he'd driven them all away. Stopping Ultron had driven Bruce into space, sent Thor on his quest across the cosmos for- what had he called them, Infinity Stones? Pursuing his HYDRA-controlled friend had pushed Steve to nearly kill him; the chase made Tony throw Clint in jail and alienate Natasha.

Tony doesn't doubt he'd carry another nuke into space to get the Avengers back.

"Tony." Rhodey says again, stronger this time. "You're leaning too much. Almost clipped the scaffolding back there. You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah…" Tony trails off, his mind truthfully not contained within the Mark L helmet. It was everywhere. "Just got my noggin up in the clouds. You asked me somethin'."

"Do you think we'll ever find them? Steve and Sam and Nat and all them."

Stark scoffs, shaking his head ruefully in his suit. "Get frozen in ice for seventy years; guess that makes you good at hide n' seek. Part of me hopes the gang'll slip up one of these days. 'Till then, guess these routine checks are just a formality for the Secretary of State."

That earned a bitter chuckle from Rhodey. "Sure feels like it. If they don't wanna be seen, why the hell would they be hiding in New York? In the shadow of Stark Tower? Really? Does Ross think Steve's an-" Silence over the receiver.

"Tony, I've got movement. Two male, a female, in that squatter's paradise over there, the orange bricks. Some energy signature, not radiation, not electromagnetic."

"Wanda?"

"Could be," Rhodey replied. "Worth a shot?"

"Let's do it," Tony responds. The boots of their armored suits propel them over several city blocks in a matter of moments, and make short work of the roof of the building, rotten and molded. The interior is nearly completely devoured in darkness, except for a circle of light from the hole Tony and Rhodey had put in the ceiling. Floodlights from the eye sockets of both Iron suits chase away the darkness, and find what one might expect from an abandoned and comdemned building. Rotted food and moth-eaten clothes scatter the floor in random intervals, as well as a few chewed slabs of furniture. The armor's oxygen filters fail to keep the overpowering smell of herb from reaching Tony's nostrils, along with the burnished smell of smoke. "Man, who's got the sage?" Rhodey gagged. "Where is it?"

"Dunno, but it means that signature wasn't a fluke. They're still here. You seein' anything?" Tony asked. He turned his head a full 360 degrees, the lights emanating from the armor coating the entire room in quick succession. It isn't long before "There!" from Rhodey makes the worn door in the wall opposite them apparent. Smoke billows out ever so lightly from the bottom lip, and another deep breath fills Tony's nose with the overpowering aroma of sage.

He doesn't get three steps before the door bursts off its hinges and Tony feels a fist like a wrecking ball clock him in his armored jaw.

He stumbles, feeling a throb in his head from where the blow had thrown his brain against the inside of his skull. The nanoparts that had been blown away by the mystery bruiser were quickly replaced by spares from the arc reactor on his chest. Definitely not Wanda. The sound of charging repulsors and a cocking turret reach Tony's ears, as did "Stand down. Lower your . . . arms. You are in violation of the Sokovia Accords, and by the power invested in me as a U.N. deputy I am placing all of your under arrest."

"That's not Steve, is it?" Tony groaned as he regained his footing, lazily training his repulsors on two of the figures in from of them.

"I don't know who 'Steve' is, but I swear we aren't hiding Captain America in here," the big one said. He was a tall, muscular man, with a deep chocolate hue to his skin and finely shaved facial hair. He looks to Tony like Sam Wilson and Thor were put in a blender. Contrast to his skin, he had on a shirt so yellow it almost blinded Tony when the light from his suit hit it, and his head was smooth and bald. Beside him was a shorter, younger man, with curly hair and beard. He was white, except for a bizzare brand on his chest, like a snaking dragon of deepest black. His fists glowed as if heated form the inside by some golden fire. All of the veins and bones within were visible. The last of the trio, fists raised, was a tiny woman with odd features, dark hair and full lips. Tony supposed she was beautiful in a peculiar way. She wore a dark, worn jacket and scarf.

"You," the big one says again. "You're Tony Stark, right? You were here in 2012. You've been training. . . what's his name, the spider-kid, from Leipzig. He was all over the news. The rest of that whole cluster was too. I'm telling you, Stark. We ain't with Cap. Only thing a fight's going to do is let them know we're here."

"Who are you," Tony shoots back. "And who's 'them'?"

"I'm Luke. Luke Cage. That's Danny," He says as he points to the smaller man. "And the lady over there is Jessica."

"I'm the Iron Fist first, Danny Rand second," Danny says. Tony rolls his eyes in his suit, scoffing quietly. The woman, Jessica, must have had super hearing abilities. "What?" She says, incredulous. "At least we didn't steal ours from Black Sabbath songs." She gnashes her teeth, "And get that damn light outta my face."

"Rand?" Now it's Tony's turn to be flabbergasted. He turns down the lights beaming from the Iron Man's eyes. "Aren't you supposed to have died in a plane crash in India? I sent my best to Harold Meachum . . . someone took him out not too long ago."

Danny's face hasn't changed throughout the whole encounter. The young man is intense, brows furrowed and eyes blazing. "I almost did it myself."

"So you're a killer?" Rhodey replied. " And here I thought you were Danny. You seem more like Cobra Kai to me, dude.

Fists illuminated from their insides by yellow lights brighten, turning into miniature suns and almost lighting the whole room up. Repulsors whine to life, ready for a fight. Luke Cage sighs, and cracks his powerful knuckles.

The roof crashes down in a storm of dust and rubble, knocking the two Iron Men and the vigilantes away from one another. A rumble like thunder cascades from outside, and howling alien screeches accompany it.

A dozen shadows fall over the group, and one feminine voice, full of hate and wrath, calls out-

"FOR THANOS!"

He's been dreaming for quite a long time, waiting for something. What, though, he can't say. Maybe for his wounds to heal and for the final loss of his love to truly sink in. He's put in an awful lot of thought to all of that while he's been here. He knows he should be out in the streets, fighting and clawing, dragging his city out of the darkness and up into the bright light of justness. But he's tried to do that for so long, ages even. Where has it got him? Nearly dead who knows how many times, wounded in body and heart. Maybe he should just stay here forever.

Something powerful holds his consciousness in its hands and beats that notion out of him. It ancient, angry, restless and ruthless. He hears it in his ears, sees it in his eyes, tastes it in his mouth. It wants him, wants him gone from the world. It has waited a thousand million years to strike and already it draws so close. More than he, it would destroy. Obliteration tracing every star is what it brings, and it terrifies him.

Matt Murdock opens his eyes.


	5. Statesman

Metal casing splintering under his Asgardian grip, the Chitauri lance split in half over Thor's knee moments before he jams the spiked, broken end into one of the dying aliens at his feet. Sweat dribbles down his forehead. Though his skin was almost invulnerable to most weapons, a few of the howling cretins had managed to wound him. His cuirass let him move easier, but it meant he was no longer an invincible tower of strength like he once was. A sizzling burn mark dots his left elbow from where one of their lances had blasted him, and cuts burn on both his arms and forehead.

But Thor is still Asgardian and the Chitauri were not. Their blood pooled around his boots and their spent carcasses were piled all around the room. Crashing behind him signified that the Hulk had found a few survivors. Thor thinks perhaps that Banner enjoys the slaughter a little too much.

Eye closed, Thor reaches out into the ether, looking for a light of consciousness that glowed a deep orange. He finds it frantic but with great resolve. Heimdall mentally opens up as he hurries frightened Asgardians and Sakaarian slaves onto escape pods.

'How many still remain?'

'Not many. A few stubborn soldiers and the talking stone. Only one pod remains, Thor. I assume Brunhilde and I will leave the ship?'

He doesn't have to consider it for a moment. In the back of his mind he thinks royalty becomes him a little too well, for how very brief the reign of King Thor had been.

'Yes,' he thinks. 'Guide them to Earth. Banner and I will give you as much time as we can. Get as far away from the Statesman as you can.'

'What of you? You know who approaches, do you not?'

'I do, Gatekeeper.'

A long mental silence. Thor can feel Heimdall's orange light flicker, wavering in confliction near his own blue. That flame stays pure and bright, resolute in its decision.

'Allfather guide you, Thor Odinson.'

And Thor is back in the bay full of dead Chitauri, unsure of what to do with himself. Are he and the Hulk to battle the minions of the Mad Titan until they drown in them? Might they prevail, and be left on a broken and bleeding ship with no pilot to guide them home?

The Hulk's grunt of surprise at something other than wounded Chitauri next to him brings Thor out of his thoughts and he sees new contenders come to battle the King.

"I am not the Maw," says the first one with a voice like a rabid wolf. He was spindly, hooded, cloaked and limber, with a mouth full of fangs and a flowing, golden spear. "So I will not pontificate on the great glory of giving your lives to Thanos. I will simply take them!"

The other, a towering, sloping brute of muscles and scales, grunted in a sound like gravel being pushed down a funnel. He stood behind the spidery spear-toter, hefting his great hammer over his shoulder. Thor notices the big one's gaze meet something to his right, and then he smirks a grin of grinding teeth. He swears that the Hulk grins back, eager to smash.

Thor clears his throat. "And who of Thanos' chosen has the honor of slaying the King of Asgard?"

"Hey!" says the Hulk.

"And his . . . friend," Thor adds.

"I am Corvus Glaive, the Titan's Hound," says the first. "He is Black Dwarf, the Titan's Maul. We will bathe the starways in your blo-" Before Glaive had finished his sentence, the far larger Black Dwarf had roared and bowled over him, running surely as fast as one of the great beasts from Jotunheim. The deck of the bay shakes as Dwarf stampedes across it, hurling himself high into the air with his rugged hammer high above his head. Lightning arcs across Thor's skin as his eyes are consumed by blue light, he leaps into the air, ready to intercept the alien brawler-

A green fist connects with Dwarf's chest. "Only Thor allowed to have hammer, stupid lizard face!"

Hulk sends him hurtling backwards into the opposite wall, jumping after him. The Hulk's furious yell makes the bay shake just a little, and he lands three shattering blows onto Dwarf's shoulders and chest before his fists are caught. The two are deadlocked after that. Gamma monstrosity and Titan's Maul push towards each other, two unceasing tidal waves crashing against themselves. The stalemate breaks when Black Dwarf's chitinous forehead slams into Hulk's, and the battle begins in earnest. Thor can watch no longer as a glaive forged from unknown steel nicks his side.

"You think this paltry stock you've slain will be remembered?" Glaive seethes as he dives at Thor, weaving his way through the God of Thunder's fare more powerful strikes. The blades of his spear bite again into Thor's side, then his cheek. "Thanos will hush all other great slaughterers from history. He will be the destroyer of whole worlds!"

Thor manages to land a hit on Glaive's hip; the nimble alien cries out, bone splintering under the King's might. Eyes displaying only hate, Glaive launches himself again at Thor, only incensed to greater savagery by his wound. But his adversary is wiser now. Thor drops to the floor, out of the way of a swing of Glaive's foot, and comes back to the fray with a Chitauri lance in hand. Now the fight is twisting, turning, flowing, spinning staves clashing and spraying sparks all over the floor.

Glaive's face soon turns from rabid bloodlust to determination. Noticing he's driving his opponent back, Thor smiles. The Titan's Hound has made the mistake of trying to meet the Thunder God head on, where his agility means nothing. Swiping with both ends of the lance, Thor lands two blows on Glaive's chest, then drops the weapon and, with a deep breath, summons the lightning Mjolnir had once channeled.

"Back to Hel with you!" He roars, and a jagged bolt of blinding white power floors Glaive without the slightest pause.

Though his skin is burned and his cloak singed at the edges, the Titan's Hound rises again, slowly. His bony legs trembled, and his grip on his blackened spear was shaky. Thor had the feeling that he was about to say something when Black Dwarf, in an unconscious, bloody ball, slammed into him, and the two assassins were vanquished at last. Thor saw the Hulk emerge from a section of destroyed wall, nose bleeding but laughing jovially nonetheless. Thor wants to laugh too, but a fissure opens in space between the King and the monster.

It fizzles with smoky, blue-black energy, its iris a dark void wreathed in electricity. Thor feels matrices of power greater than any he had ever known within, like a whirlpool that sucked in all hope of life. From within the portal, the avatar of death walks, slowly and confidently.

Thanos stands in the bay of the Statesman, observing the Infinity Gauntlet secure on his left arm. Snug in two of the slots on the knuckles rest the blue Space Stone and the purple Power Stone. Almost dispassionately, he absorbs the lightning that Thor launches at him into the Power Stone. The Huk charges him, pounding effortlessly against the impenetrable armor the Titan wears. Similarly, Thor's might was useless, laughable.

But Thor has to forge on, to give Heimdall time, to give Brunhilde and Loki and Tony and Steve time.

Thanos rolls his eyes at the assault of the two heroes, wraps his unyielding hands around their necks, and slams Banner and Thor's heads into each other. Blood, green and red mixed, clouds Thor's one good eye. Through his still ringing ears, the King of Asgard hears Thanos' smooth baritone voice say, "Tell them what you saw here today, monster. Tell the keepers of your Stones what comes for them. Rally your friends and you will meet your maker together."

The Hulk's weight next to him suddenly disappears, as if the lumbering Avenger had popped out of existence.

"But you, King Thor," Thanos rumbles. "You will watch the universe burn from the base of my throne."

Darkness opens up around Thor, backlit by shades of blue and sparks. It closes around him, and he falls.


	6. Titan-Space

Even though he had that amber sunset, lit by the fires which had burned on Titan's surface for thousands of years seared into his mind, Thanos still is forced to squint when the portal the Space Stone conjures closes, and the light hits him square in the face. Since he'd first left his home, the sun had not once moved from its spot in the sky. The Titan thinks it odd. Had the Soul Stone's 'pop' halted the planet on its axis? Even then, the orbit of Titan in relation to the sun would surely have carried the orb out of view since he had last been here. Perhaps it is some illusion, born of a cosmic arbiter greater than he. Not that it terribly mattered. Soon, Thanos would outrank them all.

Air heated by the power of an Infinity Stone caresses the portions of his body his armor does not cover. He's forgotten how warm it is, how heavy and engulfing it felt in his lungs. Thanos has lived a long time, and he does not think any spit of ground in all the cosmos has ever been painted within such a suffocating sphere of orange. The lack of any hue other than that dark bronze, like the blood of the extinct Eternals had sunk into the crust of the planet, almost makes Thanos' stomach turn. The Titan chuckles. A being who already wielded enough power to lay even the gods of fabled Asgard low, sickened by a mere color.

Beyond tasteless amusement, Thanos feels nothing as he looks upon the first world he murdered, just as he did when he was young and there was a chance for someone out there to strangle the darkness inside him.

He need not stay long. Ebony Maw, successful in retrieving the Space Stone, would likely be sating his blacker passions torturing the lone Asgardian, as well as Glaive and Black Dwarf when Thanos returned. Many a time Thanos had gazed over Maw's shoulder while he inflicted horrific anguish on his brothers or sister, and this time would be no different.

'After so long you have returned! The stars would die, a million million worlds would be dragged screaming into the void, and through every one of those storms I knew that Thanos of Titan would return for me.'

Thanos' boot shifts in the firm, hot soil, and nudges something. Even after millennia of pillage and slaughter and conquest, he remembers the unyielding fire of the Soul Stone. The jewel sat next to his right foot, the ground pressed so tightly by heat and pressure that it could not have rolled anywhere since he had last known its touch.

The Space Stone had pulled him right to its brother, at the concise spot where the Soul Stone had lay. Perhaps it hid its own intelligence. He was standing in the exact spot where he'd killed his world that fateful night, and Death had put her hand on his shoulder and spoken her beautiful words in his ear for the first time.

Something nearly stirs at that revelation in Thanos' dead heart. Nearly.

The Soul Stone's voice is shaky, neurotic and distraught. Thanos has heard the same broken syllables in the mouths of the slaves and dissidents that Ebony Maw had shattered the minds of. Perchance the centuries marooned on a dead world had driven it mad. But it was an Infinity Stone. It was older than creation, had exploited more beings than all those Thanos had slain, had obliterated gods and monstrosities he could only find in his sleep. Its intelligence was unending and malevolent. But it cannot fool Thanos.

He bends down and picks it up. Wielding the other two Infinity Stones, as well as his own Deviant physiology, protected him from the cosmic fury the Stone held within it.

'Thanos? Why do you not speak? Are you overwhelmed with my beauty, as you were so long ago? I, too, longed for your arrival a great deal-'

"I am debating trying to crush you for daring to deceive me. Certainly given my own strength combined with the Stones will do the job."

All pretenses freeze and then shatter under Thanos' icy tone.

'You've grown more tenacious. I sense them within the Gauntlet. I have no doubts that my brothers would be overjoyed to be rid of me. You too, would gladly turn me to powder, if only you could. But you need me, Thanos of Titan. You need the power I wield to bring your romantic fantasties into being. Who could have envisioned it, the greatest murderer this universe will ever know, prone to flights of fancy like a lovesick child.'

The Stone is abruptly silent, as Thanos clenched the Gauntlet in a fist, invoking the awesome might of both the Power and the Space Stones. The Mad Titan feels the briefest spark out outrage in his heart before the unceasing blackness devours it again. The Soul Stone had made him angry, and rage only made Thanos' immesurable intellect work harder to gain revenge.

"Not so talkative now, are you?" He growls, smiling cruelly. "You've grown emotional in your time here. No matter. Thanos masters you all the same." With that, he dropped the Soul Stone into its slot on the Inifnity Gauntlet, lending its amber orange to the icy blue of the Space Stone.

Thanos clutches his ears, screaming in agony the instant it locks into the golden glove he wears. The Soul Stone fights back, screaming and cursing and lashing out at the insolent mortal who dared to chain it to their will. Tendrils of its agless power course through his mind, like the tentacles of some gelatinous, venomous sea beast. Each one need barely nick his mind to unleash lightning bolts of pain throughout Thanos' being. Focus breaks up the wave of anguish in his brain, and for good measure Thanos clenches the Gauntlet again, loosing Space and Power upon Soul like mad dogs.

Gradually, through clenched teeth and grated groans, the Soul Stone grows quieter, less furious in its struggles, until at last it is silent. Squirming, fuming and angry, but quiet. Thanos takes one breath in, and it is the sweetest air he has ever tasted.

The Titan takes one last look at the blasted graveyard of his home, and then conjures a portal with the Space Stone, preferring to leave his ghosts where they haunt.

Earlier . . .

The dorsal wing of the escape pod was violently vanquished by a piece of debris from its mother vessel in a hail of sparks, fire, and twisted metal.

Loki was not the best pilot.

Tesseract safe within his own personall section of the ether, the Jotun-turned-Asgardian tried his best to weave between portions of the Statesman which the larger ship giving chase had blasted away. He'd never admit it if anyone ever asked him, but Loki's heart almost gave out in relief when Thor had asked him to flee the battle. It would have been the nobler defiance to stay, refusing to abandon his brother and King in his hour of need. But the moment Loki had looked through the viewport and seen the flagship of Thanos, shame and memories flooded him in a tidal wave so powerful it might have washed away all that he was. The last time he had seen it he had been drifting through space, waiting for death that might never come, self-loathing eating at him due to his inability to gain Odin's approval. Dark were the paths Loki had traveled under Thanos' tutelage once he had been "rescued". Visions black and dire had haunted him when he woke and slept, marking him under the eyes with dark circles and flaying his mind until he spoke in prose. The last time he had seen that ship, he had led a swarm of chittering, hinge-jawed Chitauri into the ranks of the Avengers, slain the son of Coul, murdered dozens.

Loki wishes Thor's good heart hadn't rubbed off on him. He'd been both sides of the coin. Being evil was so much easier.

The greater patches of debris were behind him now, and he slows to cruising speed in proximity to a gaggle of larger escape pods meant for dozens of people, as opposed to one. The God of Mischief sighs. Going to Earth with Thor had been a horrific idea on its own. Now, with Thor's fate unknown, Loki may as well be the King of Asgard as the last of Odin's spawn. Loki, expected to be the liasion between wayward Asgard and Earth? It's as if he was put in a fistfight against the Hulk.

Pop!

"And to think you were so nearly out of my range," a soft, sweet voice from behind him drawls, and Loki's spine immediately straightens when he hears it. A bead of sweat cold as all the ices of Jotunheim breaks through his skin at his temple, almost as if they want to greet Ebony Maw.

From the moment the Titan's Seducer opens his cracked, dry, black lips, Loki is putty in his hands. How could he not be? All of the horrific futures he had had forced into his consciousness while a pawn of Thanos, Ebony Maw had lavished on him. Soft suggestion and counsel from the Maw had been like honey in Loki's soul, and his skin filled with something dark and alien that had not been there before.

"Move your pod forward. Careful! You wouldn't want to slam into your friends, would you, Loki?" Maw purrs. The God of Mischief feels trapped in his own flesh, pushing on unrelenting walls of vein and bone, yelling at someone else who lives in his brain to return control to him. He can still feel Ebony Maw's mottled, wrinkly hands on his shoulders. "Be a dear, child; bring the Tesseract out from where you are hiding it."

Unable to stop himself, Loki feels the familiar warmth of magical energy in his hand, right before he reaches into the air and the Tesseract flares into existence in his palm again. "That's it," Maw whispers, bringins his sandpaper snout centimeters away from Loki's malleable ears. "Good, good. Now go and play with your friends again. Let me take care of this."

With a stroke of rough and ugly fingers on his cheek, Loki is alone again, free will restored, and shame magnified so many times over.

Through the void of space, breaking what would have been the sound barrier were he not in a vacuum, Vision moves as gracefully as the most lithe of swimmers. He thinks it an odd thing, to be moving so swiftly through such an immesurable distance and to feel no wind on his vibranium skin, no particles of dust detected by his superhuman senses. The idea is not entertained for long. Many times, Vision had traversed this particular ocean of stars with his mistakes on his mind.

It had begun during the Avengers' "Civil War" as it was known in the world's general lexicon. Vision cannot recall a time before he fought against Steve Rogers' faction of their team when he had used his power in anger. As Steve and his friend James had tried to flee the battle, Vision lanced a control tower down to bar their way, feeling nothing but white hot fury in his body. Again, when trying to incapacitate the Falcon, the Mind Stone's yellow beam had shot from his forehead as a manifestation of rage so great it had frightened the android. Something else, something more fickle, more soft, and infinitely more powerful had taken root in him, that found its origins in the brush of Wanda Maximoff's red hair against his shoulder that day.

Much like his predecessor, Ultron, love and hate are becoming more familiar to him. Vision finds the comfortable serenity he had known since his birth stolen. Nobody had ever explained to him how he might endure such alien and disturbing things. How could he reset equilibrium, return to the balance he once had? Vision thinks he may find the answers in the silence and suspension of space.

After informing Wanda, he had left Earth far behind, passing it and its solar system by. In his long, endless travels, other queries than restoring inner peace had arisen. Of all these, one haunted him greater than anything.

What had triggered his emotions?

Vision continues onward, his course and speed shattering the lifeless planetoid in his path. Chunks of it, hundreds of miles long, fling in all directions as the android observes keenly for a moment. He thinks back to when he had told Wanda of his plans to depart Earth. Photographic memory plays in color and noise.

"You are the strongest out of all of us!" She'd exclaimed, her voice ringing from the crystalline receiver in the Mind Stone's center. Vision had wished so desperately to see her one more time before he left the planet. However, even the power of the Mind Stone couldn't pinpoint Wanda's exact location. Once Steve had broken her and the imprisoned Avengers out of the Raft, she'd vanished off the face of the Earth. Either she was keeping her thoughts in check with ungodly skill so that Vision couldn't discover where she was by reading her thoughts, or she was using her own power to block him. Both of them had been spawned from the Mind Stone after all; it lay in Vision's skull and gave him life, and it had unlocked the potential in Wanda's genes, the hidden factor that one day in humanity's mutationary race would give way to powers unmatched.

"That is precisely my point, Wanda," he'd replied, soft and nonthreatening; Vision wished that was always his way. "Would you entrust a child with the power of an Infinity Stone? You know I could crack the Earth in two."

"You are not a child. Vision, you are more wise than anyone I have ever known. Sam, Steve, Natasha, all of them. I wouldn't come to a child for advice. I never asked Pietro for any."

The ease with which she had brought up her brother, who's death she had felt in the core of her being, had signaled to Vision that she wasn't playing around.

"Wanda, these . . ." The android had felt a small crack of pain lace the Mind Stone, as if even from across the planet he is subservient to the whims of Wanda's jealous heart. "These things that I feel . . . they are something that searching through all humanity's information has taught me nothing about dealing with. You remember Ultron, don't you? Slave to all of his feelings. If I do not master my heart . . ."

The distress that had plagued her dissipated. Instead, he felt relief on her end of their connection, and Wanda had laughed softly and richly. "Тупой!" She giggles. "You want to learn to live with being human and you go to the Internet? Connection teaches you! Staying around people lets you learn by example. I know you're hanging around in the atmosphere, Vision. Come down."

Vision had known he would never convince her how much of a threat he was. He wished that it had occurred to Wanda that she would never convince him to remain where he could hurt her. Resigned, he had blocked wriggled the Mind Stone out of the net of Wanda's perception, and a few moments after that, the shining orange curve of Jupiter was just ahead.

Vision feels something in his intelligence hunger at the thought of her. It was something he knew well, his beginning and what he thinks may just be his end. It felt so strongly and so passionately it threatened to knock Vision from control of his body and cast him into the dark. But, for now, he glides through the galaxy, letting the bolts of fire that trail behind him melt his troubles away.


	7. Earth-Sanctuary-Sanctum Sanctorum

Energy dances from the unknown combatant's sword as it shears off the shoulder plating of Tony's suit. The battle had long since progressed outside, where her giant circular ship sat suspended in the air. Its guns let out support salvoes onto the two Avengers and the . . . what were they? Tony realizes that he'd never known of any real superhumans outside of the Avengers. Clearly street level, the three were painfully low budget. Were they supposed to be their own team? If so, where'd they been all this time when Chitauri and Ultron and Zemo rained from the sky? And _did any of them know where Steve was_?

The polygonic arc reactor on the chest of Tony's suit roars to life, and as he catches the blade of his adversary in his gauntlet, the beam of energy blows her yards away from him into the bricks of a halfway constructed apartment building across the street. The instant the blue painted, horned woman is taken care of, several flailing shadows leap from the invader's ship. Beams of blue-purple energy erupt from their spears and Tony hears murder in the air. More Chitauri swarm over the whole block. Rhodey and Jessica catch them as they hurl themselves from the ground, and the War Machine armor earns its name as a walking artillery platform. Bullets shower the aliens and smart missiles annihilate them in plumes of flame. What few of them make it through the hail of gunfire and repulsors Luke and Danny keep from escaping into the city.

Nevertheless, Tony is terrified.

Smoke from the damaged buildings fills his nostrils, and all he hears is the whirr of his suit's repulsors and the screeches of the alien warriors throwing themselves down at the defenseless, pregnable Earth. Tony had smelled this approaching, had felt the tremors on their way ever since he had looked into the sky and seen the Tesseract's portal. Greeting Tony's eyes had been the stars, and something beyond space, time, and all hope had looked back at him. Seen him. _Knew him_. From that fateful day when he had challenged it, flown a nuke into its ranks and denied it his world, the unknown enmity made it its mission to find him.

Tony had felt its gaze on him while he slept beside Pepper, calling weakly in his nightmares for the Mark 42 to save him.

He had felt it when Wanda had forced visions of armageddon on him, and when he'd forged the consciousness of Ultron, who'd almost brought that same oblivion to fruition.

When he'd supported the Sokovia Accords against all friendship and all pleas from Steve, he'd felt that far-off horror breathing down his neck, felt it approaching faster every second.

And now it was finally here.

Or was it?

Tony's Uni-Beam burns a sizzling, stinking hole in one of the aliens he was locked in melee with. It screeched and thrashed around in its weird death throes, and then fell. Suddenly it was silent. The Mark L clanks to the ground, and Tony's breathless, recuperating allies are at his side, facing down the angry, twirling warrioress that led the Chitauri into battle.

"This," Luke huffed. "Is 'them.'"

"I am Proxima Midnight," she erupted. "I am the Scimitar of the great Titan, Thanos! You," the tip of Midnight's sword points in the direction of the group, her eyes flashing in fury. "Have something I want. A penance, you owe : the Time Stone, spirited from the cosmos by Agamotto so long ago, and the Mind Stone, taken from Thanos' own treasury by impudent humans. Surrender these prizes to me, and I promise that Thanos will make your death swift."

"The Infinity Stones . . ." Danny breathed.

"This gibberish makes sense to you?" Luke asked.

"Yeah . . . cosmic objects. Infinite power. K'un Lun was . . . The chi I summon, it's only possible because of one of them. The Soul Stone."

"Already added to the Gauntlet that great Thanos wears!" Midnight laughs now, full of dark triumph."Now you are nothing, Iron Fist."

Danny's teeth grit, and Luke lays a large, dark hand on his shoulder.

"I crushed the Hand, I'll break you too," the Iron Fist growls.

A smug smile crosses Midnight's lips, and she raises her sword like a centurion.

"I think not," she replies.

The ship above her rumbles, and a bay door facing them grinds open.

From the sky fall angels of death; six armed, toothy-mawed, savagery filled . . .

"Outriders! Rip them apart!"

* * *

The first thing that greets Thor is a red haze that stings his eye and a throbbing welt on his forehead. Beyond the crimson is nothing but black. Empty air below him, the pitted metal wall of a ship above him, he hangs like a slaughtered pig from chains around his arms. Wherever he is is dark, terribly dark. Even with both eyes, even with his eye clear of blood that still oozes from his wounds, Thor doubts he could see his hand in front of his face through the hungry blackness. He flexes his arms as if to escape, to shatter the bonds with the ease he had broken so many other chains in his 1500 years. The Thunder God strains his mighty muscles, panting, cursing, crying out as he feels something tear in his chest and tastes the metal elixir of blood in his mouth.

Thor remembers bitterly the last time he had been entrapped so. Then he had been in the darkest, hottest, yawning pits of Hel, in the great and terrible hand of mighty Surtur. And again, bonded to a chair in the nightmare carnival of hedonism that had been the Grandmaster's Sakaar. Now, though, the King dreads what cold-hearted leviathan has its sights on him.

"You," a deep, baritone voice whispered, somewhere to Thor's left. "Try not to struggle too much. They built these chains out of something niether of us can break. Did they put them on your arms or feet?"

"Who . . .?" Thor begins, his voice wavering.

"Who could lay low the God of Thunder?"

Then Thor remembers, remembers dancing a dangerous melee with Corvus Glaive, remembers his orders to Loki and Heimdall, remembers his and Banner's throttling by-

"Thanos," he breathes, barely even speaking at all.

"I've been here a long while, stranger," the disembodied voice continues, and Thor is perplexed by the unwavering cheerful tone to it. Who could still have hope and contentness in their hearts while onboard this nightmare vessel that had cast a shadow of genocide over unknown thousands of planets? "Long enough that I can't remember what light looked like, and that's been more than enough time to think of some way to escape this brute's ship. I'm not terribly bright . . . so I'll need you to-"

Thor wasn't listening to the mystery man. More than anything, sight still stolen and scarlet, the Thunder God wanted him to be silent, leave him with his fear and his grief. Thor wonders if his people had escaped, wondered how many innocent children the cold hands of space had slain thanks to Thanos' rage. He wonders if that same wrath had fed the Titan's black inferno of power, had feasted on the flesh of Loki, of Heimdall.

"Are you listening, friend?" his companion said again.

From below, an eldritch whirring sound, and the smooth, passionless laugh of Thanos. Below them, three slashes of colored light ripple through the darkness, in close proximity to each other. One purple, one blue, and one the warmest orange Thor had ever seen.

"No more words, Prince of Power," comes Thanos' rasp from the isolated throne below. The blue glow of the Space Stone brightens and grows like a newborn sun. Lit by the tender mercies of the Stone, Thor's hidden companion is revealed to his left as he screams.

He was large, broad, muscles doubling and multiplying upon his Adonis-like body. Years ago, when Thor had battled the stern and silent Dark Elf Malekith in London, he'd seen statues carved by human philosophers and artists of ages past, meant to envision their race at its finest, its most holy. The Thunder God decides that all those creators must have had his unknown companion in mind. His body ripples with pure physical strength, as well as a light dusting of fine, dark brown hair. It curls down his scarred forehead in wood-colored ringlets, and though it is matted and bloody it shines, ever proud, in the blue light. His beard is full and healthy, and every squirm of his agony afflicted body is visible; nothing but a skirt, green and gold, graces him.

The light dies out, and the "Prince of Power" is again shrouded in darkness and heaving breaths. Thanos chuckles, rises from his seat of near omnipotence, and treads from his enemies' prison. Now there are not even his dreaded Infinity Stones to push back the choking blackness.

Bloodied and in quiet despair, Thor's one good eye shuts, exhaustion taking him again.

The ether slips around him as if he were falling backwards into a pool of amicable, unhurried nectar; Thor barely registers that he has entered it at all. Flickering, his light moves through the void, its only illumination the dim light blue of his being. He dances through it, barely conscious of his treading of that celestial water. Not until he brushes against another's light, a dash of green in a day filled with so much red and blue. One who is close to him, constricted and drenched in black desperation, and who's refreshing emerald hue echoed through centuries of Thor's memories.

' _Sif!'_

* * *

Burning in the air like 4th of July sparklers, Stephen Strange's Sling Ring portals expand as he kneels before them, phantasmic syllables shimmering from his lips as he reads from the Book of Eternity. Wong stands before him, wide shoulders tensed as he supplements Stephen's magical power with his own. The spell had to spread over the entire Earth's face, he'd known. In ancient times, the Book had been used to bring the entirety of the Masters of the Mystic Arts together, when magical threeats were too insurmountable for them to face alone. Shuma Gorath, Zom; many mighty gods and demons had been felled thanks only to this vital tome.

And now, one approaches who would lay waste to them all.

Today, though, Stephen does not gather sorcerers to stave off Thanos.

"Heir to the First Firmament," He began, clear and passionless.

"Reach across this world and show me the heroes. Show me who will save us. Show me a ghost in armor, show me a shielding defeatist, let me bring them together to drive back the darkness, as you let Agamotto, Hoggoth, and the Ancient One before me.

"Lend me strength, great Eternity. Let me assemble the Avengers once more."

The portals grow.


	8. Hell's Kitchen-Queens-Earth's Orbit-NY

The framed photo of Maria Castle's radiant face, flanked by the smiling visages of Frank Jr. and Lisa Castle, is caught in a single orange slat of light from the street. Frank breathes deeply, thin sheets loose around him in bed, in Matt Murdock's apartment. He'd been saddened to hear of Matt's recent death, and Karen had been kind enough to offer the apartment of 'Daredevil' to him, in compensation for sobbing into his shoulder over Matt for an inordinate amount of time. Frank hadn't had anywhere else to go, and his former squadmate Curtis didn't have more than one bed. Ever since he'd avenged his family, they'd no longer haunted his dreams and his sleep, no longer called out to him as he sweated unconsciously in his bed. His sleep was as fathomless as the ocean. Deep. Dreamless. Frank's life had long ago been bereft of dreams, in any sense.

But he was making progress, or it felt like it. The black haze that had taken root in all his soul's soil, planted the day his family had been slaughtered, was less virulent every day. Every week, sitting with other damaged goods, other people who had witnessed brutality and had the same darkness in their hearts, it was like bathing. Curtis certainly knew how to run group therapy for veterans. Little by little, meeting by meeting, Frank was becoming human again. Grieving. Sealing his wounds up. Redeeming. Evolving.

But there were some things Frank had picked up as the Punisher that would be ingrained in him until the end of time.

Paranoia was a big one.

Frank's ears perk up as the floorboard in the entryway of the bedroom creaks. He'd tinkered with it so that its creaking sounded akin to a lightning strike when stepped on. He never knew when or if Billy Russo might track him down.

He turns his back to the noise, ruffling the sheets and getting enough air beneath them to hide his movements. One scarred and calloused hand snakes along the bed, closer and closer to the prize under the pillow, the mystery intruder still approaching him, it was just a matter of feet now . . .

Frank flings the covers off of him, tangling them around the assailant, rolling out of bed, and puts his hand to his quarry's head -

A Heckler and Koch P30 handgun in his grip, his fingers firm on the trigger.

"You got three seconds to tell me who the hell you are before I blow your brains all over the floor," Frank growls. "This is an old friend's place. He's dead. Would be distasteful to make a mess."

The man covered by the sheet laughs, lifting a hand up and slowly brushing away the barrel of the gun from his forehead. "God knows I've bled on this floor enough." Lifting the sheet from his body like Christ lifting his hood, Frank's mouth hangs open at the sight of . . .

"Matt," he breathes, saying the younger man's name for the first time. "You're . . ."

"Alive, yeah."

The red irises of Matt's helmet are just like his eyes beneath them; impassive.

"How long?"

"What kind of question is that, Frank?"

"How long you been lying to the world," Frank says, murmuring and slurring the words only a little bit. "Letting them think you croaked. Letting Karen and your friend think that."

Matt bows his head at that, smiling, although regret practically radiated off his body. "I was in a coma, Frank. A hundred tons of rock and steel will do that to you. First thing on my mind after I woke up would have been speaking to Karen and Foggy. But there's . . . something else. Something terrible. I can't explain it Frank, it's . . ." Matt's voice drops low and then fades into nothing.

"May I sit down?" His red and black-gloved hand gestures to the couch out in the greater apartment. Frank nods curtly. The two of them trail out of the bedroom and Frank grabs a pair of beers. He sensed he would probably need one after this.

"Talk," he said, imperiously.

Matt sipped intently, and then began.

"I don't know what happened," he said. "But after the cave in . . . it must have been something to do with some kind of head trauma I got. It's like my abilities have been dialed up to eleven. I could hear heartbeats before? I can hear eyelashes brush together. I can hear blood rushing in your veins right now. But I saw something, while I was in-coma. There's something out there, in space. Something impossibly powerful, and it's on its way here.

"What, like Asgardians?" Frank asked. The Battle of New York had been six years ago, and by now the whole world knew who had led the alien Chitauri against their planet.

"Worse. I can feel it. From what we know of them, the Asgardians are powerful but they aren't conquerors. Whatever - whoever this is, they're universal. Out for blood."

Frank laid back in his chair, taking a long, multiple-gulp drink of his beer.

"What the hell are two guys with guns and sticks gonna do then?" He rasped, feeling just a little exasperated as he gestured to himself and then Matt. "I shoot people, Red. People, not aliens or Norse Gods or Darth Vader or whatever is lurkin' out there. You want my help, I get it. Those days are done, man. I can't do it."

"Well then it's a good thing there's a group of enhanced individuals based right here in New York who can. You and me are going to see Tony Stark."

Matt set the drink down, pushed the chair in, and took one glimpse around the apartment he had lived and loved so much in. Once again, Frank can taste the regret in the air. For a few moments, he pities Matt, or feels whatever someone like Frank Castle does in place of pity.

"I'll be at a motel a few blocks north. Come find me."

Matt edged towards the door, and Frank's beer lay forgotten.

"I like what you've done with the place, Frank. It was good to see you. Thank you for giving me a reason to be back here.

"And that woman, from that rooftop a few years ago, the one you helped me get to? If you see her . . . If she comes by, let me know."

Then he was gone, a scarlet blur in the black night, a soul that the world had moved on from, whose time had passed, leaving Frank Castle with a late night buzz and a dilemma.

Frank didn't do well with those.

* * *

"Peter. Peter. Peter. Peter. PETER."

Peter groaned. The half-veil of sleep over his brain had caught on something as it was pulled off him; perhaps an unclipped thorn of a comfortable dream that just wouldn't come out. Couldn't May just wait five minutes? Usually it turned into three hours once she'd said yes but Peter didn't register that in his stupor. He moaned with fatigue and his partially-conscious face once again was swallowed in the shadows of his pillow.

"PETER. PETER. PETER."

May was persistent! Saturdays were usually not jam-packed with anything, errand or play. The last time he'd had a large chunk of time devoted to something this time of the week was when he'd helped Ned build the Lego Death Star; watching his friend drop it, and the faux-durasteel pieces of the Empire's famed superweapon scatter across the floor had felt like being stabbed.

Or, at least, that had been the last time that Peter Parker had had a busy saturday.

Spider-Man, on the other hand . . . he had them all the time. And busy Fridays. And Sundays. It was the fault of these that Peter was so drained at the moment.

"PETER. PETER. PETER."

'Oh, for Christ's sake, May!'

"KAREN CALLING. KAREN CALLING."

Peter bolted up in bed immediately. The urgency didn't eliminate his tiredness outright, but it burned enough of it from his bones for him to string together complex thoughts; thoughts like 'I thought May sounded a little Robocop-y today . . .' and 'something's wrong.'

Three things disturbed him outright.

One : Karen never "called" him. His suit's A.I., speaking to him through a speaker in his nightstand-bound webslingers, was never so authoritative. She was . . . meek, and polite, Peter would say; always answering him with a chipper tone in her robotic voice. The tone she used now was reserved only for the latest software upgrades from Tony Stark, the suit's creator, or if Tony wanted to contact him and was otherwise occupied. Tony never invited him on Avengers outings, though in his heart Peter knows he doesn't want his protege hurt. What could've warranted the invincible Iron Man calling in the reserves?

Two : Karen only answered him. Peter was sure it was some predetermined behavior of her programming. She was there to assist, and only materialized in Peter's ear when he needed assistance. In his hunt for the Vulture, nearly a year ago, he'd been as talentless in his suit as he'd ever be; then, Karen had spoken up in his earpiece to aid him of her own accord. Now, fighting within his Spider-Man shell was like riding a bike, except there were more places to use it in New York's concrete jungle.

Three : Smoke filled his nostrils.

For a moment he thinks it might have been May, up and working earlier than God, as she often was. Had she burned something she was cooking? It must have been truly foul. And she'd expect him to slump it down with a smile on his face. Not that she was a bad cook, Peter genuinely loved-

It's fire.

Something big is burning.

Spider-sense thunders in his skull, so loud and so long he thinks his brain is running between his fingers as he clutches his ears-

"PETER. KAREN CALLING," the commanding drone continued.

"What is it, Karen?"

"Hello, Peter!" That was the real Karen back, chipper and happy to help. "I am monitoring the Iron Man prosthetic currently occupied by Stark Industries A.I. designated 'F.R.I.D.A.Y.'"

"And?" Peter swung his feet onto the floor, rubbing his eyes and scratching his muscular chest. "What, did Mr. Stark lose her? Needs me to track her down?"

"The prosthetic is being heavily damaged, and Mr. Stark is inside."

Peter was standing in seconds, electric panic running through him and filling his veins.

"Where is he?"

"Manhattan! Would you like me to map you the quickest route?"

"Yes, get on it right now, Karen!"

Both webslingers were around his wrists within a second, superhuman speed and sheer terror gripping him. One pull of a ceiling string later, and the red and blue wonder of cutting-edge technology and dumpster find splicing that is the Spider-Man suit is staring him in the face. Peter pulls it on hurriedly, and it automatically conforms to his shape. The HUD within his mask lights up, and he pulls his window open.

As he leaps from it, the wind rushing through the suit's fabric, then catapults into the city, all he can think is-

'Good thing it isn't black.'

* * *

Like space-faring insects, the crowd of escape pods jets slowly towards the blue curve of planet Earth. The sun, glinting from behind the world, reflected off starboard panels of Sakaarian steel, lighting the whole group up into a swarm of shiny glass. From the viewport in that composed the front of his vessel, the reflections nearly blind Loki, even through a forest of his own hair blocking his vision, to the flashing azure bulb in the ship's console, indicating one of the other pods wanted to open communications with his. An upward flick of a switch later, and the likeness of Brunhilde the Valkyrie buzzes into being on a port side panel.

"Loki?" She says, uneasily. He raises his head, and eyes the dome of the camera below the panel. "What is it?"

"Korg's plotting our course to the surface now. See the shuttle at the front of the pack?"

Loki found the thing among the armada of tiny ships. It was wider and stockier that the pods around it, with a triad of large, circular engines at its rear and geometric Sakaarian markings crisscrossing it like the reticle of a sniper's rifle. "That's us. He says just follow close behind and we'll be alright." Loki nodded and then put his head back down in his hands, raven locks of shining hair obscuring his face and shame from the camera.

"Is Heimdall in the same ship as you?" The Jotun-turned-Asgardian said.

"Thor told him to load civilians into pods back on the ship," she replied. "I've put the word out, but there are a lot of pods out here. If he surfaces, I'll let you know."

"Thank you," Loki answered, facing the camera and smiling wryly. Brunhilde returns it, but after a half-moment, her face turns serious and solemn. "Thor isn't in there with you, is he?"

Heart aching, Loki's whole body sags in his Sakaarian leather suit, and his chin dips towards the deck of the pod. Time to face the music.

"No. And neither is the Tesseract."

Brunhild's mouth falls open, but Loki's words bowl right over hers, refusing to stop pouring out of him like tears. He'd spent hours in this pod, alone with nothing but the lack of his brother and the brand of his failure to keep him company. Not even the multicolored atom bomb of hyperspace flares out the viewports had been able to remove the steaming stamp from his brain : the universe will burn and you have exacerbated that. The words keep repeating in his head, sometimes in the slippery syllables of Ebony Maw, and sometimes in his own voice.

"I lost us Thor, I lost us the Stone and the Statesman, I lost us everything. I've been free of Thanos' control for almost a decade and in the end I'm still helping him. I took the Tesseract from Odin's vault in Asgard. I drew Thanos to us. My brother is on Sanctuary II right now, having his flesh rended or his mind broken because of me. Thanos is one Stone closer to throwing everything into the fire because of me! I have to lead the last Asgardians to a planet that last time I checked counts me among its worst war criminals?" The God of Mischief laughed, every change in pitch like another drop of airborne acid inside the pod.

"And now Heimdall is missing. The apple in the damn boar's mouth, as it were."

He sucked in a stale breath of air, filling his lungs completely and exhaling with a loud haaaa . . .

Brunhilde just looked at him. She was impassive, silent, waiting to be certain Loki had finished.

"I was never good at the whole advice thing," she admitted. "I was gruff as a Valkyrie and a Scrapper and I think it's safe to say I am now."

Loki spared one pained, frustrated glance over his shoulder, but was silent.

"I'll give you this much, Prince : Don't ever start drinking. You think you know what ruin is now? You've got no idea."

Loki didn't even face the camera this time, but he did hear Brunhilde clear her throat and say "Korg is waiting for the airspace to talk with you. I'll see you planetside, Loki."

* * *

Luke hadn't been sure he can drown. He can't be stabbed, that much he knows; he's seen knives crumple against his skin. He once made Jessica watch a powersaw blade dull into a squarish hunk of useless steel when he pressed it to his abdomen. He can't be burned. He was as flammable as a hunk of iron. He can't be beaten; nothing less than K'un Lun's Immortal Weapon and Hammer Industries battlesuits had ever managed to even faze him. He can be shot, as was painfully and literally drilled into him a few years ago.

Now though, he seems as drownable as any other man.

The sun was gone. The things that had come spilling out of Proxima Midnight's ship swarmed over him in such titanic numbers that all he saw was a gnashing void of scarred, scaly skin and eyeless toothsome maws. He'd given up trying to fight his way out of the wave of Outriders what felt like years ago. It was like trying to beat the ocean into submission. He'd feel the bones of one splinter under one of his punches, and then another hundred replaced their slain comrade.

The heroes had long since lost control of the battle. The last thing Luke had seen before the tide of Outriders had devoured him was Iron Man -or Tony, Luke didn't know which he preferred- arcing into the air on repulsor boots. The horde had shifted, as though the hundreds of Outriders were one being, and they'd piled up each other like driver ants to get him.

Now, it seems, all there was to do was wait for the feeling of teeth trying to puncture his skin to fade, hope the creatures lost interest, and pray that Danny and Jessica weren't piles of bones before they did.

And that Claire had had the good sense to stay put in Harlem like he'd told her to, what felt like years ago.

Abrupt as a thunderclap, the buzzsaw whirr of a firearm cuts through the growling, drooling beasts, and a whole slew of them fell dead atop him. Luke throws both fists upward with all his might and -gulp!- he sucks in a ragged breath, the destroyed New York intersection rushing back in on him. Another whirr, and another slash of bullets slices through the morass of Outriders. Impulsively, Luke's eyes follow the trail of smoke from the knifing rounds to the corner of a rooftop to his left. The alien ship's engines ruffles the man's hair and blow dust into his squinty eyes, but Luke had spent enough night's in Pop's barber shop, with only the radio and a broom to keep him company, to know the cruel skull-sigil on Frank Castle's chest anywhere. The base of the M134 minigun in the Punisher's hands is balanced on the lip of the roof and its barrel smokes as it spews rounds into Outrider after Outrider. Some of the dead fall away, and Luke catches a scrap of green cloth, and then a hairy hand. He heaves forward and lifts Danny's bloodied but still stubbornly alive body from the pool of alien matter and tosses him to the second story of an undamaged building, out of reach of the invaders.

Repulsors echo through the unearthly roars, and beams of blue light blow a few Outriders into the sky. Tony, his suit haggard yet deadly as ever, rockets into the air and bombards their ground-bound brethren; Jessica follows him a few seconds later.

Above this renewed struggle, Luke picks something peculiar from the air; an innocuous sound, but familiar somehow.

Clink, clink, clink . . .

He looks to the northern end of the block or two the battle's raged in, and his breath hitches in his throat.

Matt Murdock, clad in bloodshade Daredevil red, stands a hundred and fifty feet away, striking his billy clubs against each other and in general being as big a target for the Outriders as he can. Adrenaline blows through Luke's shock as twenty or thirty of the beasts break off from the main swarm and barrel towards him, six-limbed gaits carrying them swiftly. Luke can't break out of the swarm fast enough, can't kill those assaulting him fast enough to even begin to run to Matt's defense.

Claws swipe no more than a few feet from his still clanking body-

And a blue-red shadow, swung on a bungee cord of spider's webbing, purloins Matt from the spot he'd stood in. The pursuing Outriders crash to the ground, screeching in cheated rage.

Matt crashes to the ground right in the middle of the ocean of black, split scales and starts pounding away. His savior, the newly-arrived Spider-Man, leaps and bends his body nimbly, landing solid blows on and weaving through the blades of angry Outriders.

And for the finale, blinding plumes of flame emerge as Rhodes bursts into the sky, hails of rockets and bullets cleaving through what remains.

From the sea of her dead minions, Proxima Midnight claws her way out. She growls hellishly and before Luke can even register it, she's charging him, indigo hair in a nebular halo around her horned head and eyes swamped in bloodlust. The alien's on him in seconds, matching him in height and driving his tired body back, almost bludgeoning him with her weapon. Matt's too far away, Castle's reloading, she's like a blur and he can't land a hit on her. She's strong too. One blow against his bruised ribs sends Luke reeling.

Midnight is just about to stab downwards into his organs when a sizzling tongue of orange lightning hits her square in the chest, catapulting her through the air. "The Ancient One may be dead, but her students aren't going anywhere!"

Luke's eyes fall on two men; one tall, pale, with dark hair and finely-trimmed goatee, clad in deep blue monk's robes and elaborately embroidered cloak. Energy the color of lava courses around his fists, angling in lines into webs of fire like shields. The other man is heavierset, with wide shoulders and full cheeks. His head is shaved, his skin dark, and his body donned in similar robes to his fellow, albeit in dark maroon instead of blue. He wields the same power in his palms, though he shapes it into a flaming whip instead.

The first one, the pale man, waves one energy caged palm and-

Whoooooossssshhhhh.

The circular craft that had delivered Midnight to Earth splits and tears itself apart, pluming flames spiralling from the wrent hull like skyborne dragons released by one spear of the man's fiery power. A portal materializes in front of Luke with the sound of a thousand dots of glass being dropped on asphalt. Sparks of volcanic energy are thrown in all directions, as if the portal is on a circular, hypersonic rotation.

The last thing Harlem's hero sees before that gaping maw advances on him and devours him is what looks like a museum of Indian history on the other side.


	9. Wakanda-Sanctuary

Flames roil across the surface of Loki's pod as he breaks through Earth's atmosphere. His vessel limped at the end of the pack, and through his viewport a hundred other craft could be seen against a backdrop of sand-blasted canyons and savannahs teeming with Earth's natural wildlife. Korg's flight plan had taken them to a low point on the planet, near the coast on a massive continent, heavily populated but in such low densities that the Asgardian refugees could land with little or no risk of being discovered. Upon hearing this, Loki's guilt-frozen face had stretched its mold just a little, grinning weakly to himself. King Loki's reign was beginning to improve. The people were safe and had a haven.

The final barrier of flames pops like a balloon and the verdance of the land bursts into his eyes : twisting trees with blocky shelves of leaves, frayed and wizened brown grasses just thin enough to display the water-starved soil underneath, and herds of Earth's odd, thick-skinned pachyderms in dense enough numbers to hide the ground. To what the pod's magnetic sensors say is the north, a great river is depressed into the land, twisting far into the distance and tipped by a ginormous tangle of thick-limbed trees. It almost looks too thick to Loki, as if the trees had evolved to keep something within their ranks hidden. All the same, the land is awash in life, and, Loki hopes, it'll be the beginning of new ones for Asgard's sons and daughters.

Below him, those battered men and women, with their frightened children and weary parents, have already begun to file out of their pods. Thirty or so soldiers, offduty in Vanaheim when Hela attacked, charge out in their golden suits of armor and station themselves at crucial points of the border of landed pods. A few men have already cobbled together tents and supplies, and Loki sees Korg depart the leading craft. Behind him come the last few Sakaarian gladiators that had survived the Battles for Asgard and for the Statesman.

His stomach starts to lift inside him as Loki switches the controls over to land mode, then sits back and breathes deeply. The drop is quick but controlled, and the sounds of releasing steam and landing pads extending from the pod's bowels reaches his ears.

 _Shuk!_

The hatch retracts into the pod's hull, and Loki's isolation is ended. He walks on human soil for the first time in years. He strides among landed craft and looks up into a sky full of more on their way. He walks among his people, beaten down but rising again, returning to the glory of the days of Odin. Peace fills his lungs in blue portions, and it doesn't seem like the universe is in what could be its last days at all.

It takes him a while to find Brunhilde; asking nearly every man or woman he came across, seeing if anyone had seen her walking between ships. He catches the puff of her hair over the crowd and then he sees her. The Valkyrie's in conversation with two horn-helmeted soldiers, who begin to peel out of the dialogue as soon as they see him. As they trail off, the dark-skinned Asgardian calls after them "I want a ten-mile by ten-mile square around us! Every rock and tree and bush, you let me know. Make sure we're alone out here!"

"You've been busy," Loki says as her eyes fall on him.

"Someone had to assume command," she replies. "I'm just thankful these men were off-duty. We'd be defenseless if it weren't for them."

"Is that really all that's left?" Loki breathes. "The thirty of them?"

"None of us were there when Hela arrived on Asgard. I thought fighting her with a dozen other Valkyries by my side was a nightmare . . . Thor and Bruce and I saw all the bodies she left."

"Still no word from him?"

"No. Nothing from Bruce either."

Loki's eyes darkened, and he suddenly wishes the world would leave him alone, that Brunhilde and all the men and women around him had decided to land somewhere else and let him process his emotions with only the land and the animals to keep him company.

"Loki," he hears Brunhilde say. "It's not your fault. You know Thor; he's implacable once he's made up his mind. And Banner . . . he's a follower. Thor cast down the Destroyer, fought back the power of an Infinity Stone, and clawed his way out of the Grandmaster's pits. He'll put Thanos through the ringer too. Nothing he can't survive."

"Brunhilde, I've been on that ship-"

She shakes her head, and waves him silent. When she looks at Loki next, her eyes have a look of divine certainty about them, and he can remember the roaring fire in his heart when he'd seen it in the gaze of Odin.

When he was being lied to.

Loki feels a way he hasn't felt in years, a burning sensation behind his ribs that was most unorthodox for a Frost Giant to feel, and definitely not something he'd experience in his matured wisdom. It felt freeing, to sink into that familiar dark tingle in his chest. All the same, he wraps hands of dark blue flesh around it and chills it, just enough so that it doesn't boil through his skin and out into the material world.

"I swear, they'll be fine. I can feel it-"

"You know where Heimdall is."

The scream of an aircraft overhead deafens the two of them, and any more grievances Loki had in his mind are ripped away along with what feels like his eardrums. In his feet he feels the vibrations of several masses hitting the ground around him ripple through the soil. Korg rounds the bend of a pod just in time for the thing to roar above them, and the sound makes him flee right back the way he came. Loki kneels and presses his hands to his ears, and scores of Asgardians among the landed pods duck for cover, fearing that the ground will start to be torn up by hails of weapon discharge. Loki catches a glimpse of the ship as it peels away, heading northwest. Two ovular repulsors in the ship's underbelly keep it in the sky, and wings like the beating crests of undersea animals decorate its bulbous middle. Between the pulsing engines, a hatch slides shut, and it jets off towards the horizon.

Loki's been through enough adventures and battles in the last few thousand years to know when a weapon is pointed at him. Instinctively, his hands shoot up in the air, palms to the sky in surrender. His eyes lift from the ground, and upon seeing his new captors he gulps audibly. They were screwed.

"I'll be damned," Clint Barton whispers to himself, the shining triad of an arrow less than an inch from Loki's face. "Cap, Nat, you guys aren't going to believe this . . ."

The Avengers looked more than different from the vague, almost featureless portraits of them that Loki had kept in the back of his mind. Barton still looks smug and overworked, with a glint of mischief in his eyes. His sleeveless combat suit is dark purple, with black trim running down the front. It gleams in the sunlight, as though it's made of microscopic plates of armor instead of fabric. Loki feels as though his own weapons would probably need a bit of elbow grease to pierce through the material. Barton's face has only a few more wrinkles in it than when Loki last saw him, mostly around his eyes. He's shaved the sides of his head from the back to the temples, but the skyward tuft of hair on his scalp is untouched and stubborn.

"Clint, keep your top on," Natasha Romanov drawls slowly from behind her friend. One gloved hand finds his shoulder. Loki's eyes fall on her next. Her gaze is so much less striking than it was when they'd been face to face last, though she is still undeniably beautiful. Her hair has been bleached a platinum-blonde color. She's swapped out skintight black for armor-lined forest green wear. She, like Barton, looks older and both more mature and more tired. Loki's not heard of the fate of Earth for years now; what had happened to them all? What were they doing in the middle of nowhere? Where was Stark?

Romanov unslings a pistol from her belt, and with fluid skill pulls back the hammer and points the barrel right at Loki's nose.

"Both of you, step back."

Both Romanov and Barton's heads snap backwards.

"You sure, Steve?" she asks.

"Do it."

As one, they both sheath their weapons and shuffle to Loki's sides. He feels hands on his wrists. From between them comes a tower of armorweave encased-muscle. Of all of the earthlings Loki knew from his invasion of Earth, Steve Rogers has taken the most violent assault on the man he was. The flashy colors of his uniform, characteristic of the nation and people he served, have been stripped off the costume and dirtied. His eyebrows have become bushier to hide his darkened eyes, eyes that have betrayed and been betrayed, and the whole bottom half of his face is entangled in a beard the color of a bear's hide. He carries no shield with him. Fists that had given Loki a run for his money are at his sides, though clenched with warning tension. His hair is long and wavy, combed back in a pseudo-mullet, and he wears no helmet.

"Sam, Bucky, make sure his friend doesn't use that sword of hers."

A short, dark-skinned man with red-tinted goggles and a mean-looking gun in his right hand approaches Brunhilde, his weapon raised. Following him comes an adonis of a man, tall and lithely muscled, in a thick, vestlike blue suit similar to Loki's own. His face was stubbly, and rivers of brown hair reached below his collarbones. In his hand of dark, segmented steel is a rifle as long and deadly as he is. Both he and the darker man seize one of Valkyrie's wrists. Loki looks up at Rogers standing over him. Rogers stares back with piercing eyes.

"I don't know what you plan on doing here," he says slowly, hanging on each syllable. "But these people you're with don't look like any army I've ever seen, so I'll be giving you the benefit of the doubt. They're the only reason we won't be putting you in a Wakandan prison cell. Don't make me reconsider."

"We don't have time for this!" Brunhilde exclaims, flexing against Sam and Bucky's grip on her. "Loki, tell them why we're here. Tell them where Thor and Banner are!"

"Thor?" Rogers' face instantly brightens, and Loki can almost see the beardless, avid figher beneath his new exterior.

The same is true of Romanov. "Banner?"

"Loki, tell them!"

The instant before his vocal cords rev up, a blue, stony fist connects with Rogers' jaw, and sends him flying end over end into the air. An audible "Wooooo! Look at 'im go, Miek!" splits the air like a thunderbolt.

Time seems to stop. Loki looks at Barton. Romanov looks at Loki. Barton looks at Sam and Bucky. Bucky's eyes seem to scream as Rogers sails through the air. Loki looks at Valkyrie.

Then they all rush at each other.

The first thing that comes to Steve's mind after the black atom-bomb in his mind clears up is dirt. Lots of dirt. It mingles with drops of blood in his beard and fills his mouth. He plants his palms in the soft, grassy dirt, squints his eyes at the harsh Wakandan sun. Or was it just his head spinning from the clock in the mouth he'd gotten? He thinks he's got a concussion. It ached like taking the gauntlet of Iron Man's suit to the face.

He stands up, stumbles a bit, then his eyes fall as if fate had decreed it exactly on Loki. Tne God of Mischief trades parries and ducks with Clint, arrowhead to daggerblade, while dodging the kicks and baton swats from Natasha expertly. His ally, the dark woman with the topknot, slices one of the boosters on Sam's wingpack with her sword, and the Falcon plummets to the ground in a barrel roll. He's up in an instance and holding his own against the mightier Asgardian as best he can.

Blood arcs from Bucky's face as he takes a glancing blow across the cheek from the giant stone creature, the one that sounded like Riz Ahmed. The former HYDRA assassin ducks and dives, and judging by his wince overloads the servomotors in his new arm when he slugs "Korg" in the chest.

Steve is up in an instant. He fights through the disorientation and sprints across the hundred feet or so between him and the skirmish. He's fueled, powered by fear for his friends but also something dark, something red. Steve'd trusted Loki, even after all these years, even after the attack on New York, murdering Coulson, destroying the Helicarrier and plaguing Clint with self-loathing. And immediately, the Asgardian throws it back in his face.

Steve feels like he did in Siberia, taking Tony's suit apart piece by piece; like he's more right than he's ever been in his life and exasperated that everyone can't see it.

He wants to pound Loki's head in.

His feet thunder across the ground and rocket him into the air; right in the way of one of Korg's massive fists. It crashes into his side and slams him again into the hard ground, but behind him Bucky rushes the giant stone-man, knocking him down and assaulting his craggy facial features with blow after blow of his vibranium hand. Steve's left ribs feel like they're cracked down their entire length, and his gloved palm clutches his side. He feels a tap on his shoulder, and whirls about, fists raised. Superhumanly strong hands puncture right through Loki's mouth, but only an outline of light wreaths Steve's arm.

This is one of Loki's holograms, illusions that acted as he commanded.

"Captain Rogers," it says. "You need to listen to me. I and the Asgardians did not come here to fight."

"You could have fooled me," Steve spat back, growling at the pain in his side.

"I was instructed to find Tony Stark by my brother, the last time I saw him. Captain, something is coming to Earth, someone. And he has my brother. He is more powerful than anyone you or your team has ever faced before, more mighty than the deities your species used to worship."

Steve's eyes don't soften. He glares at the Loki-double. "And I'm supposed to believe you're not aligned with him why?"

"Who do you think we are fleeing from? Look at us, Captain. Does this look like the golden-halled Asgard my brother would talk to you about? We are refugees."

And deep down, Steve knows he's right. There were no soldiers amongst the masses of panicked men and women who had fled when the Wakandan Talon fighter screeched overhead. None of them carried weapons or wore armor. Their ships were not in military formation, nor were they warcraft. They were bloodied and dusty, throwing just enough effort into their wear and their procedure as would ensure their survival. These star-travellers would never have fled from their cosmic stronghold unless it had been set ablaze.

"You tried to kill me."

"Korg is a buffoon. I had no idea he was still out of his pod. I know it may be hard to believe, but I've changed," Loki's double continues. "Once, I would've been content to watch my people burn as long as I could've ruled the ashes."

Steve looks the Asgardian right in the eyes, searching for something, some shred of deception that meant he was lying. Steve didn't want to be wrong about him. This man murdered Coulson. Steve's fought him up close, gone shield-to-scepter with him in Germany. He'd seen the slashes of insanity and dark purpose in Loki's mind.

Now. . . Nothing. No malicious intent lurking just beneath his pupils.

He really was just trying to save his people.

"Alright," Steve gasps. "Alright."

Snap! The Loki-double disappears in a flash of gold-green light. Steve gets back up, albeit with much greater effort on his left leg than his right, just in time to catch Sam's body as he's knocked into him. "Who the hell are these guys?" He groans, tossing aside the bisected remains of an uzi.

"Aliens with the names of Norse Gods who keep peace all over the universe," Steve replied.

Sam shrugs, wiping a trail of blood from the corner of his mouth."Sounds about right."

"Everyone! Stand down!" Steve shouts.

"Korg, Brunhilde! Stop!" Loki exclaims.

Brunhilde kicks Sam away from her, just enough to get clear of the fight, then sheathes her sword and puts her hands up. Bucky leaps from his spot on Korg's pinned body, wiping a trail of blood from his temple. Loki himself manifests two copies of himself and, as Clint and Natasha swing their weapons through the magical facades, he rolls away from the two Avengers and dissolves his daggers. Like Brunhilde, his hands flash into the air in a sign of surrender.

The deception realized, both former SHIELD operatives nod to each other and rush Loki, batons charged and arrows drawn. They're almost on him before Steve, wishing he had a shield to toss, raises his hand, barking "That's an order! Clint! Natasha!"

"You're buying this crap, Steve?" Natasha growls, no longer out for Loki's blood but firmly grasping her baton. "You remember what happened when he surrendered in Germany, right?"

"This isn't a compromised SHIELD we're dealing with, Nat," Steve shoots back, ignoring the bitter look on Clint's face. "He makes one wrong move, you know who he'll personally answer to."

Steve activates his communicator in his ear, and it crackles to life. He looks at the sky just to avoid any possibility of connecting eyes with either Clint or Natasha. Natasha's anger at their change of plans is one Steve can ignore, but Clint . . . Clint had loved working for SHIELD, adored being an agent almost as much as he did his wife. Steve didn't want to think about all the pieces Clint had been ripped into when he'd had his mind enslaved by Loki and attacked the Helicarrier, how much having killed his colleagues weighed on his conscience.

"Are you ready, Wanda?" he says.

"Yes," buzzes over the receiver.

"Get over here then."

A few seconds later, she rockets through the sky from her hiding place across the fields, red energy spiralling from her hands and her feet where it had catapulted her into the air. Her red hair sparkles in the aging sunlight, and scarlet sashes whirl about in the wind behind her. Wanda Maximoff lands with a gravelly sound. Hands dancing in front of her, she conjures bonds of crimson light around the necks and wrists of all three of the offending alien party. Loki visibly groans as his new collar tightens about his throat.

"What about the people?" Wanda asks, gesturing to the herd of parked spacecraft behind the two sides. "Don't hurt them!" Brunhilde cries.

"Look, as soon as we get this cleared up, I'm sure T'Challa won't mind putting them up," Sam replies from behind her.

Steve turns to Wanda. "Sam's right. He's a generous guy, but this is technically an invasion of his country. We need to bring them before the Tribal Council, or at least before T'Challa. He's the King. His call." She nods and walks over to Clint, checking his profile for wounds and chattering in Sokovian with Natasha.

"I'll get another Talon fighter on the horn," Bucky offers.

"Loki," Steve asks, meeting the gaze of the manacled God of Mischief. "Will they be safe? The Asgardians."

"We had a company of soldiers on a scouting mission when you arrived, Captain. They'll keep the civilians safe. Where are we going?"

"To see the King," Steve replies.

"We're being moved," The Prince of Power says, and the words hang on meathooks of blackness and silence. Thor does not know where Thanos has gone, but he has wished for his return for days. He has seen nothing for at least that long; there are not lights in the Mad Titan's throne room, nothing that could chase away the black shroud that made his eyes burn trying to pierce. He longs for any illumination, even if it comes from one of the Infinity Stones Thanos currently bends the universe to his will with, or the viewport through which Thanos can view all of the carnage Sanctuary II unleashes upon unsuspecting planets, all from the comfort of his throne far below. When the ship's master departs, the window slams! shut and kills everything but buzzing darkness. On the plus side, he could feel his face healing dramatically well, and every day, if the torments of Thanos did not keep him awake, he felt more physical strength rolling through his veins like thunder.

If only emotional fortitude accompanied it.

"How could you tell?" he groans, letting his head dip according to the whims of gravity.

"I've had as many adventures around the cosmos as you, Odinson," the Prince chuckles. "I know the feeling right before the Space Stone whips up a portal anywhere."

"We had it on Asgard for years, how did you-" before the King of Asgard can finish, a yawing maw of blue light and grey, roiling smoke roars into being, and immediately he begs for the darkness to return. After so many hours of absolute midnight this single stroke of color is like an axe buried right in his chest, or a dagger slit past his eyes. Through the haze of overstimulation he can just barely make out the Prince being drawn through the steaming gates of the portal and disappearing. The entire display contracts with a silent pop! and his chains slacken against the ceiling.

Another swirling conduit opens around Thor. The light it ripples across his body doesn't hurt him nearly as bad as the previous one did, and Thor can see his filthy arms, his feet hanging into the open air below him just before-

The rumble swallows his ears as the portal closes around him, and he's falling, shot through places and histories, bouncing between atoms and across solar systems. Like a pinball machine, each body of matter sends him careening into another and the endless ricochet continues for what feels like a thousand years. Before Thor's mind could be shattered by the unceasing smash into dark corners of the universe, his path sends him back into the material world, crashing onto a black steel floor.

His back rattles with pain as he hits the floor, and it takes him a moment to reorient himself after his gravity-lacking journey. Good eye roving over the tiny space, he notices bars extending from the floor to the ceiling, and a single lamplight hanging in the center of the hall on the other side of the bars. It seems to Thor like some kind of prison cell. More sets of bars line the wall opposite him, and he deduced that more cells stretch down the corridor on his left and right.

"You're still here, Thor?" says a voice Thor recognized from across and one to the right from him. Out of the shadows peeks the lips and nose bridge of a masculine caricature of a man. The rest of his wide, angular face can barely fit in the wedge of the bars.

"Is that you, Prince?" Thor asks. His voice rings down the hall unsettlingly. "Where are we?"

"Aye, it's me," comes the deep, rich reply. "I think we're in the regular dungeons. Where all the little folk that the Mad Titan wants to keep breathing go. Though, I don't think they stay breathing long after they get here."

"Death will be a mercy," Thor spits. "I cannot bear the darkness any longer. I only hope that my brother's alright."

"Eh, the dark is not so bad. I thought so the first year or so I was here, but I think I've adjusted well enough. The decades blend together-"

Thor's jaw drops, one good eye bugging out of his head even though he can see almost nothing. "Year, decades? How long have you been here? Who the hell are you?"

"I am no one, now; just a prisoner who's putting every fiber of his being into finding a way off this floating death machine."

"He is Hercules."

Thor's mind instantly magnetizes to the newcomer's voice, centuries of recollection comparing the version of it from his memory and the one he had just heard. The match is perfect. He had thought it was an illusion, conjured by his solitude and the endless torments of Thanos' flagship. Visions cycle through his mind; he remembers Jotunheim, pride and combat fury lacing through him like vipers, Mjolnir his heavy fist of vengeance; he remembers Vanaheim, the way earth had humbled him, and the way her aura had let all of its tension loose the moment he'd stepped onto the battlefield from the Bifrost. She is here. A part of Thor's aura, too, contracts and relaxes like a muscle out of pure shock. His weariness shakes away as a vestige of the good and golden past lets her head hang low into the light.

"Does Asgard still stand?" Lady Sif says, her stormy eyes boring into Thor's. His mouth is dry and what little voice he can conjure comes out as indecisive groans. "Was I remembered?"

"Sif, how did you-" Thor begins, then running a hand over his face and grunting. "Where have you been all these years? How did you get here?"

"Where have you been? I have been in chains on this ship for so long. Did no one notice my absence? I defied Odin's decrees for you, Thor; broke every oath I could name. Why couldn't you for me?"

"What're you talking about?"

Sif's eyes turn away from him, her arching brows knitting harshly. In the next cell over, Thor hears "Hercules" cough loudly. Thor knew that name; just one more mystery at the bottom of an endless mountain of them.

"I was cast out from Asgard, same as you. Odin took my weapons and my strength as punishment for giving the Aether to Tanleer Tivaan. I wandered the galaxy until I went somewhere I shouldn't have gone. When I saw this ship overhead-"

"Thanos," Hercules finishes. "I was there when she came aboard, Thor. He found her on Xandar, right before he blew it to Hades."

Fire flashes behind Sif's pupils. She half-growls, half-hisses towards the Prince of Power.

"He did not ask you, Olympian. Thor, he murdered the entire planet, all save me. He found one Stone there, and said I knew the location of another."

"The Reality Stone."

"Yes. I wouldn't tell him . . ."

"So here you are." Thor rises to his feet, wincing just a little at the return of feeling in his feet and wrapping mighty hands around the bars of his cell. Sif's eyes follow his good one intently. Behind their biological grey color, silver shreds of quiet despair hang opaque.

"You, Prince of Power," Thor booms. "She calls you Hercules. It makes me wonder what kind of fool you are that you'd steal the name of the prince of a kingdom that's been dead for millennia. Olympus is but a barren ruin." He smiles wickedly at Sif, hoping she understands his plan. "You know, Sif, I heard as a boy that the Olympians were an offshoot of Asgardians, who fled our home, and in their arrogance tried to build an empire greater than that which birthed them."

"God of Thunder," Hercules snarls under his breath. "I would suggest you stop talking right now."

"It just occurred to me, Sif. The universe punished them! They dared to try and rival Asgard, and were cast down for it-"

The whole world shakes as a thunderclap of noise punches into his ears, and Thor is thrown to his feet. The apocalyptic rumbling is gone after just a moment, but the spinning vertigo the sheer vibrations had given him don't vanish nearly as quickly. From the cell wall, a massive, fist-shaped imprint extends towards the general direction of Thor's head.

"It's him," Thor sighs.

"You really have a deathwish," Sif murmurs.

"He's also very lucky I do not have my Lampsi!" growls Hercules. "It would have barrelled through these cell walls in a second!"

In Thor's mind manifests the image of Hercules' rippling muscles contracting as he swings the gleaming head of his mace through Sanctuary II's halls, punching flaming holes in the hull of the Mad Titan's capital ship, freeing the million-and-one survivors of Thanos' million-and-one slaughters; a justice for the Asgardians who will never feel the light of another sun upon their faces. Now he understands.

"Hercules," he says. "If you were to get this 'Lampsi' back, you would be able to free us?"

"Aye," The Olympian grunts. "And bury it in the Mad Titan's skull."

"Thor!" Sif cries. "I know that look! You can't. Thanos will crush us all."

"He only has three Stones, Sif! His power's great but not unmatched, not yet. But if we do not escape, and if we don't bring down this ship, he will track down what's left of our people and he will kill them. The highest of the high, the seat of supremacy you and me and a thousand others fought so hard to protect; it will crumble."

A laugh the acoustics of the cells turned wraith-like echoed through the space, cold and tinged with mechanical pitch, the vocal cords of a steel-and-plastic automaton. Odd clicking noises emanate from the cell next to Sif's, as well as the odd metallic clunk! Of something steel impacting the floor.

"None of you have any idea what he plans to do, do you?"

All three supposed gods lean forward, eager to lay eyes upon the mystery newcomer.

The squarish toe of a metal boot clangs against the bars, sticking between them and out into the hallway. Next, wiry, jointed digits wrap with cephalopodic gracefulness around the cell bars, and a face that looked as though it had been stitched together from the shells of gas giants. Eyes blacker than the darkness above Thanos' throne emerge from the cell, eyes that glittered with animal savagery bound in grey cords of cunning and calculation.

"This isn't some campaign against the Asgardians Thanos is on," she jeered. "My father is beyond single massacres now."

"Father?!" Thor said, incredulous. "Thanos has no children."

"And yet I'm his creation. He's going for the Stones. They will give him the power to do what he's always wanted : send the universe kicking and screaming into the embrace of his lover. I am Nebula."

The ship is bigger than he'd ever thought; he'd heard stories of it, legends of the enormity that drove those who beheld it mad before Chitauri and Outrider rended their flesh, but he'd never though he'd have witnessed it for himself before his death. Lava-colored eyes flick across passageways and hangars faster than the speed of thought, and divine vision grants him perfect knowledge of what minions of the Titan go about their business around him. They are completely unaware of his presence; he had slipped past more than enough Draugr and Marauders in his service to the crown. He knew how to vanish between necrocraft or over the sides of elevator shafts where no one would ever find him. His senses don't detect any recorders in the bowels of the ship. His cloak is buffeted by stale air as he sprints down the battlecruiser's corridors, Hofund at his back and age taking no toll on him. There's some kind of miasma in the air; somethinb blocking out his third eye, his sixth sense. There's only a taste of their essences in these halls, and it wafts deep into the interweaving labyrinth of Sanctuary II's innards. He almost breaks the isolated silence with a chuckle; he's like a bloodhound, sniffing at plates of steel for just an atom in association with those he seeks. He ducks past an opening hatch, shaking off the ominous feeling that he was being watched. Perhaps a camera back in the hangar had caught him and his pod landing after all. The room he enters is darkened, with a circular port in the ceiling leaking pale light into the space. In forests of racks hang enough weapons to arm a planet's worth of soldiers. There are gleaming swords in every variety of blade, axes heavy and sharpened; knives by the hundreds of millions, maces and spears and machine guns, artillery barrels and pistols and daggers and flails and bombs and clubs. One mace above all the others draws his eye; it shines like the sun in een the smallest pillar of light, and its massive head looks as though it has tasted the brains of many foes.

One in particular catches his eye. It sits apart from the rest. The axe is made entirely of grooved metal, with a bladed end and engravings slithering down the handle. The blade of the weapon looked large and thick and sharp enough to slice a man in two, and curved downwards from the handle like the wing of a bird. He remembered the axe. It echoed through thousands of years of memories. He remembed the axe in the hand of his king, remembered the words that he'd spoken as he cast down the great fire demon upon Asgard's soil.

'The grim weight of Jarnbjorn will wrest the cosmos from your wicked grasp!'

They would need weapons to escape, wouldn't they?

Heimdall hoists Jarnbjorn from its place, slings it along his back, and vacates the armory quickly. Now he runs towards the top of the ship, waging a brutal uphill battle against Sanctuary II's artificla gravity. As he sucks in great drafts of breath, and his thoughts waver to the coming conflict, the journey rapidly comes to a close. The Communications Room had only three Chitauri within it; one was lashed to his chair in some kind of harness that made him one with the delicate signal-receiving machinery in front of him, and the other two hunched over on either side of him, chittering absent-mindedly.

"All-Fathers, give me strength," he murmurs, loverlike, to himself, and throws himself into the room.

One of the aliens' guts are spilling onto the floor in an instant; his friend howls raising his arm-cannon, but can't fire fast enough to squeeze a shot out before Hofund's blade separates the weapon from him bodily. The edge slices the Chitauri warriors head from his neck before being plunged into the body of the third.

Distantly, Heimdall hears screeches and howls of other Chitauri, feet pounding up accessways, weapons firing out of pure animalistic rage. He peruses the controls. The distress call channel can be summoned with but the push of a button. Shutting his eyes, Heimdall pushes it into the console, and speaking loudly and clearly says "To any and all who may hear this message, I am Heimdall, royal Gatekeeper of Asgard. King Thor and General Sif are being held prisoner at these coordinates. Please save us!"

The pounding of guards' feet grows louder. Heimdall slams the alarms and then puts the console to the sword.

Red fills every hallway of Sanctuary II, and blaring beacons fill the ears of all aboard.

The jailbreak has begun.


End file.
